Friday, May 28, 2010

Heather: “After the Andrew Parker scandal, I was blacklisted. People wouldn’t talk to me. People sided with him because he could get them into the better parties, better clubs. It’s very superficial here like that. And he was the It Boy at the time. I basically had to leave. I was pushed out of the social circle.

“People would talk to me to see what I was doing so they could report back to him. Or they would tell me, oh yeah, we saw him out with that girl or these people. I didn’t really want to hear that, so I just left.

“Los Angeles was a hard adjustment. The first year I couldn’t stand it. I hated the food, so I learned to cook really well to emulate the food I was eating in New York. I made some very good friends. I probably have better friends in LA than I do in New York now.”

Luke: “Why did you leave ****?”

Heather: “I think I just grew up. I kinda wanted a relationship. I wanted people to take me seriously. I had the potential to do other things.

“The next thing I knew, I was traveling. I was in it for years. I was working at the Gold Club in Atlanta.

“I didn’t stay there long. I wasn’t jaded by life enough to do that. The dances there were $10 and they charged you $300 a night to work there.

“I took a regular job.”

Luke: “How did working as a dancer affect your life?”

Heather: “I have knee problems to this day. I wasn’t eating a lot, but I drank every day for eight months. It was basically a requirement. If you refused alcohol, you’d be reprimanded. Now I don’t even drink at all, hardly.”

Luke: “Why would the clubs want you to drink alcohol?”

Heather: “Because it increased your sales. They could charge more money for dancer’s drinks.”

We were at the “Tampa Show”, an informal gathering of Shakespeare scholars.

I wrote then:

She’s a nice Jewish girl (the youngest of five children) who went to Brandeis University before transferring to the University of Miami where she graduated with degrees in journalism and political science.

Heather grew up in New York (she now lives in Manhattan), attending at times a Reform synagogue with her family. At age 12, she had a bat mitzvah. “My brother had a better one.”

She says she’s been reading me since 1998.

“I wish I would’ve stayed at Brandeis. I would’ve turned out a lot better. I had the grades. I was intelligent in that way. But I was very immature at 19 and I wanted to go to Florida.”

Heather: “I woke up the morning after new years and I was in bed with him.

“A friend of mine had a party in Tribeca. I didn’t want to go back up town. I had an apartment in the city but I lived in Florida. So I slept over. So I guess he came in later and got in the other side of the bed. It was a large bed.

“So I roll over in bed the next morning and he’s there. He says, ‘I’m hung over. Let’s get a bloody mary.’

“That happened. Two weeks go by. It was my birthday. I was going to come up for the weekend. He threw a party for me. Somehow I ended up moving in.”

“It was the only high-profile coupleness that I was ever in. I’ve been with high profile people since then but I never really wanted to be a public couple again because people are pulling for the relationship not to work out.

For the past 18 months, Heather has been dating New York nightclub owner, film producer and real estate investor Noel Ashman.

Heather works as an event promoter and Manhattan socialite.

Wednesday afternoon, we talk by phone about her life after college.

Heather, who lives in Manhattan: “I took a job working for a politician in Palm Beach County. I got fired because his wife didn’t like me. I had just gotten an apartment. I had spent all this money. I had bills. I was looking through the paper. This was before there were a lot of jobs on the internet. There was an ad for dancers, make $500 or $5,000 a week. I figured I would take that job until something else came up.

“The next thing I knew, I was traveling. I was in it for years. I was working at the Gold Club in Atlanta.

“I didn’t stay there long. I wasn’t jaded by life enough to do that. The dances there were $10 and they charged you $300 a night to work there.

As I review the entire corpus of Judaic literature in my head, I can’t find much about trauma. I wonder if trauma is goyisha thinking (outside of Torah and hence has no validity)?

I remember moving to the United States at age 11 and suddenly people started saying I was insecure.

I was just as insecure when I lived in Australia, but when I moved to California in 1977 I was suddenly surrounded by people immersed in psychological thinking.

And then weren’t as many abos around.

When my father was kicked out of the Seventh-Day Adventist ministry in 1980, I was 14. Many of my peers speculated that this would traumatize me. I immediately accepted this. I thought, I’m traumatized and I’m miserable and I hate the church. I proceeded to have a miserable ninth grade. I got a 1.2 (D average) GPA in my first semester. I thought of myself as a victim.

There is another theory as to why the sectarian hasidic world in particular has had so many cases of covering up and defending child sex abusers. It is that they simply do not regard these people as so terrible. The evidence for this appears obvious, in that in case of after case we see that they continue to allow sex abusers to teach and refuse to turn them over to the authorities and warn the parent body. Had they caught the rebbe eating at McDonald’s, you can be sure he would have been fired, but not so when it comes to fooling around with kids. The question is why do they have this outlook, and how come they don’t regard child sex abusers as so terrible? Here is a possible answer (which a wise person suggested). Look at where these societies get their information about human nature, the information that they regard as authentic and true.

I remember many of my Jewish friends agitating on Facebook to prevent the execution of Martin Grossman. I did not know much about the case. It seemed clear that Grossman had committed murder and therefore I felt no need to defend him from capitol punishment (which I support for the crime of murder).

During the discussions about the Grossman execution, I looked at some of the haredi websites (until the comments made me sick). What I found interesting was the incredible level of ignorance of most of the writers, all of whom had been in yeshiva and many of whom had studied there for years.

Friday. 12:30 pm. As he began driving east on the Ten freeway from Santa Monica, he tried to free his neck of unnecessary tension. He tried to think up with his whole torso. He tried to let go of habitual postures in his face and thinking.

He wondered which of his character flaws would trip him up this weekend? Would it be his arrogance or his thirst for attention? Perhaps it would be his lust. The wily shiksa — the blooming Adventist girls — they know how to trip up a holy Jew such as himself.

As he daydreamed about Adventist girls, he accidentally slipped on to the Five freeway north towards Sacramento and went eight miles out of his way. His soul yearned for Pacific Union College but his body was assigned elsewhere.

I remember many of my Jewish friends agitating on Facebook to prevent the execution of Martin Grossman. I did not know much about the case. It seemed clear that Grossman had committed murder and therefore I felt no need to defend him from capitol punishment (which I support for the crime of murder).

During the discussions about the Grossman execution, I looked at some of the haredi websites (until the comments made me sick). What I found interesting was the incredible level of ignorance of most of the writers, all of whom had been in yeshiva and many of whom had studied there for years. They were able to declare that a murderer can’t be executed unless he was observed by two kosher witnesses and was given warning, which they thought settled matters. Had these people known a bit of responsa literature, there would have understood how things worked in the real world, and especially what was done in the days of the rishonim. Do these people think that if a guy stood up in shul and opened fire with a machine gun, killing 20 people, that a Jewish court couldn’t execute him because he was never given a warning?

Nataly: “Cheap rent. I live on the same block I grew up on, only a couple of doors down. I pay $700 for a one-bedroom, utilities included.”

“I went to an all-girls yeshiva until the middle of 11th grade when I finally dropped out and went to public school. I was such an outcast in [yeshiva] and I had no friends and I couldn’t take it. I begged my mother to let me go to another school. The rest of my family didn’t know about it. They still don’t.”

Luke: “Were you always unpopular at yeshiva?”

Nataly: “Oh yeah, I was totally unpopular. I had no friends. They all thought I was the biggest freak. I don’t blame them. I was dressed badly. When everyone had bat mitzvahs, I was too poor to buy presents. My mother refused to give me any money, so I’d go to the 99c store and buy a cheap little thing to give them. Nobody would talk to me. They were all these little rich spoiled girls. I was different. It was horrible. As the grades went up, it got worse.

“In yeshiva, you had such a small class, maybe 30 kids in the whole grade. Everyone is really cliquey. If it is a private school, they all come from money. If you are not like them, it’s brutal.”

Nataly: “It wasn’t what they would say. They would just ignore me… Just stares and eye rolls and silent treatment. Just typical immature girl stuff.”

Luke: “How about the rabbis and the parents of your classmates? Did they make much effort to integrate you socially?”

Nataly: “I was always kinda acting up. The rabbis considered me a handful. I was failing. They were dealing with that. Socially, they never made an effort. I don’t have any memory of the other parents. I had a feeling that they told their kids to avoid me.”

Nataly: “Yeah. From a really young age, like eight or nine, even though my family was.

“I have a younger sister. She’s also not religious.”

Luke: “What were your parents thinking living with all these people?”

Nataly: “They didn’t have a choice [because of poverty and illegal immigrant status]. I always asked them, why couldn’t we just live in a tiny little apartment by ourselves?”

Luke: “I can’t imagine. It sounds like hell.”

Nataly: “It wasn’t hell. I really didn’t think much of it until I got a lot older. I always accepted it. OK, we have to share the bathroom with ten people, with interesting characters. It wasn’t hell. It was interesting.”

Luke: “Have you stayed in touch with anyone from that house?”

Nataly: “Oh God no.”

Luke: “What keeps you living in Boro Park?”

Nataly: “Cheap rent. I live on the same block I grew up on, only a couple of doors down. I pay $700 for a one-bedroom, utilities included.”

Nataly: “Yeah. From a really young age, like eight or nine, even though my family was.

“I have a younger sister. She’s also not religious.”

Luke: “What were your parents thinking living with all these people?”

Nataly: “They didn’t have a choice [because of poverty and illegal immigrant status]. I always asked them, why couldn’t we just live in a tiny little apartment by ourselves?”

Luke: “I can’t imagine. It sounds like hell.”

Nataly: “It wasn’t hell. I really didn’t think much of it until I got a lot older. I always accepted it. OK, we have to share the bathroom with ten people, with interesting characters. It wasn’t hell. It was interesting.”

Luke: “Have you stayed in touch with anyone from that house?”

Nataly: “Oh God no.”

Luke: “What keeps you living in Boro Park?”

Nataly: “Cheap rent. I live on the same block I grew up on, only a couple of doors down. I pay $700 for a one-bedroom, utilities included.”

I wanted to share with you what was a very interesting weekend on our end. On Saturday, I participated in the wedding ceremony of one of President George W. Bush’s current spokespersons, and a former aide to First Lady Barbara Bush. Both Presidents Bush and their first ladies were in attendance. They hardly ever attend private events, so this was very special for the families and everyone else who was in attendance. My wife, Liat, and I wondered if we would get to meet them or not. We ended up not only meeting them, but having some very pleasant one on one time with the forty-third president.

After the ceremony, President George W. Bush congratulated me for a job well done from about 12 feet away, and I thanked him. He then smiled and motioned with his finger that he wanted me to come over to him. I then had the privilege of shaking hands with the two presidents and their first ladies, who all congratulated me on doing a great job. That would have been an experience in and of itself.

I found myself asked, “What does kosher mean?” And I stumbled. “I think it means ‘fit’ or ‘appropriate’,” I said. “Food fit for a Jew. I’m a vegetarian and that makes keeping kosher much easier.”

And then I found myself explaining “kosher grape juice.” I said that about 2,000 years ago, the rabbis decided that Jews should only drink grape juice and wine grown by Jews. I didn’t explain but I think this is obvious, that it was part of the rabbinic fence to minimize socializing with non-Jews.

Dennis Prager had a great point on the first hour of his radio show today: “My wife and I were at a mall in Houston. I made the observation when I saw kids from all backgrounds and how courteous they were. “Thank you.” “Have a wonderful day. “Thank you. What can I do for you?” Always with a big smile. And you realize how working for private industry as opposed to working for the government so often makes you a better person because you are forced to be polite and decent and inquire about people’s lives. I am a big behaviorist. Wish enough people a nice day and you might become a nicer person.

“You don’t become a nicer person at college. You become a more selfish person. Work or travel.”

“There isn’t a single good argument for going from kindergarten to college without smelling the flowers.”

I often encounter these professional beggars (meshulachim) in Orthodox life. They always have a great story. I have a personal code of not giving to people who directly solicit me. Instead, I save my charity for myself. I figure I should pay off my loans from my family before I give to beggars.

I grew up in a converted 3-story boarding house called The Boro Park “Meshulach” House. For those of you who don’t know what a meshulach is, they are those guys who look like Rabbis, and who knock on your door asking for tzedakah for their mothers-uncles-fathers-kallah’s-sick niece. A lot of them are genuinely very poor, but naturally there are some crooks in the bunch.

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

That kind of talk reminded me of my Christian upbringing when evangelists would boast about how many people they’d baptized.

Alexander Technique is extraordinarily difficult to be captured in words. It has to be experienced in person from the hands of a qualified teacher.

I’m now halfway through the book and I am pleasantly surprised. It may be the best book on the Alexander Technique. Not for its prose style, but for its insights.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

I guess I’m afraid of having to have an intimate conversation. I guess I’m afraid of intimacy.

When I hear, “We need to talk,” I get chills up and down my spine. I start pumping with adrenalin. I immediately try to guess what the conversation will be about and how I can answer the person’s concerns. If I see that I have done something wrong, I start thinking about how effectively I could lie my way out of this problem and what would be the best way of shading the lies so that I can later defend them as truths.

I don’t think normally healthy people experience such fright when they hear, “We need to talk.”

I think there’s something wrong with me. It’s not my degree of fright when I hear these words, it’s my realization that I’m walking around with this fear all the time, but only in moments of crisis am I conscious of it.

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

I picked up this book and I did not expect much. On the back cover, it reads: “Daniel McGowan has personally introduced more than 7,000 people in the U.S. and Europe to Alexander Technique since 1983.”

That kind of talk reminded me of my Christian upbringing when evangelists would boast about how many people they’d baptized.

Alexander Technique is extraordinarily difficult to be captured in words. It has to be experienced in person from the hands of a qualified teacher.

I love McGowan’s description of what happens when most people go to sit down:

As the person approaches the chair, the body shortens in stature as a muscular set is adopted in anticipation of sitting down. The back is then bent further, followed reluctantly by the knees until the bum makes heavy contact with the seat of the chair.

…One does not generally have a choice of how to sit down. This is because, after receiving the stimulus of deciding to do so, each attitude of the body which is adopted, step by step, during each millimeter of the journey, is determined by the step before. In other words, each minute step is the habitual straitjacket for the next one. This means that a person is a slave to habits which are very powerful because they have been repeated thousands of times during a lifetime. (Pg. 25,26)

I don’t mind blogging about it, but no, I definitely do not want to talk about it.

I hate that question, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Do you know what type of people ask me that question? Hot chicks who realize I’m into them but they’ll never want to sleep with me, not if I’m the last man on earth, but they know they’ll still have to run into me, so they turn away my advances and then say, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Why would I want to talk about it? To talk about it would be to discuss why I feel like a loser. Less than. A zero. A wanker. Defeated. Ashamed. Humiliated. I desire you but you don’t like me in that way. I can’t bear to sit in this shame and to talk about it. I hate this place of infamy. It’s just so low and humiliating. I know you’re going to tell all your friends that I hit on you and how you refused me and then none of them will want to sleep with me.

I measure my self-worth by the hotness of the women who sleep with me (or at least I did until I came to understand the profundity of the Torah and the need for adherence to God’s immutable — God I love that word — moral law).

About Me

I am an Alexander Technique teacher in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com). I have five books available on Amazon.com. I've been blogging since 1997. I was born in Kurri Kurri, Australia, on May 28, 1966. I have lived in California since May 1977.